Tag: divorce

Review 2528: The Home

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

Eleanor is moving. She’s doing this because after 26 years of marriage, her husband is leaving her. Their marriage had been an open one, which translated to her husband Graham being serially unfaithful while she had two affairs that ended in friendship because she loved Graham. The last few years have not been happy, but still it’s hard for her to accept that he has left her—without really talking about it—for a woman who is younger than her oldest daughter.

Now she is trying to make a home for children who, all but one, are adults living on their own. Nevertheless, they return in ones and groups to stay with her.

Eleanor struggles in this novel with the idea of what home is, with loneliness, with her desire to mother children who don’t really need it anymore, with desire and love for Graham, and with the need for someone to take care of her. The novel looks unflinchingly at the situation that many middle-aged women found themselves in beginning in the 1970’s, when divorce rates began to rise. For example, Graham (who in my opinion is an unrelenting jerk) supposes Eleanor can get a job when she has been trained for nothing and has no work experience for the last 26 years except being a wife and mother.

This is sometimes a rough read but always an insightful one. Mortimer has an unfailingly observant eye.

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Review 2282: #DeanStreetDecember! Company in the Evening

~ whatmeread ~ 5 Comments

I finally could fit a book for Dean Street December into my schedule! This event is being hosted by Liz of Adventures in Reading, Running, and Working from Home.

In 1940 London, Vicky is fairly satisfied with her life. Five years ago, in the midst of divorcing her husband Raymond for infidelity, she discovered she was pregnant. But she is getting along fine raising her daughter Antonia with the help of an old family retainer, Blakey. She works three days a week as a literary agent and devotes the other days to Antonia. She is an independent woman who doesn’t feel the need for company except for an occasional visit or outing and dislikes sentiment and receiving sympathy.

However, she finds herself inviting company when her mother tells her she’d like to sell her house and move in with her sister. The problem is what to do about Rene, Vicky’s widowed and very pregnant sister-in-law, who has little money and no family and lives with Vicky’s mother. Vicky has a spare room and feels she owes it to her mother to offer Rene a place to stay, even though she and Rene have almost nothing in common. She has no desire to invite her, but she does.

Soon enough, she becomes convinced that they are incompatible. Her efforts to get along with Rene usually end up being misunderstood. Worse, Blakey dislikes her. She is always brusque, but to Rene she is sometimes disrespectful.

Then Vicky runs into Raymond. The other woman returned to her husband, and Raymond is just recovering from a bout of tuberculosis and hopes to take a desk job in the army. They begin occasionally spending time together.

This novel takes a thoughtful look at marriage and at Vicky’s preconceptions of how marriage should be as she takes another look at what broke up her own. It is an intelligent, witty, and involving story. I liked it very much.

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Day 1092: Commonwealth

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

Cover for CommonwealthIt’s difficult to explain what Commonwealth is about without either telling too much or failing to make it sound interesting. Yet, it is a very interesting novel about how one afternoon changes the lives of everyone in two families, or at least that’s partially what it’s about.

The novel begins when Albert Cousins, an attorney from the district attorney’s office, crashes a christening for Fix and Beverly Keating’s youngest daughter. Fix only vaguely knows Bert Cousins from his work as a police officer. Bert has crashed the party in an effort to get away from his own household with his three children and pregnant wife, Teresa, as he does every weekend.

But once Bert sets eyes on Beverly Keating, he decides she is his future. One kiss in the upstairs bedroom with a sleeping child begins an affair that results in divorce for both families.

The novel concentrates on the effects of this divorce on both sets of children. Although Carolyn and Franny Keating beg year after year to stay in California with their dad, they are uprooted to Virginia to live with their mother when she and Bert move back to his home state. Bert demonstrates again and again that he doesn’t care to be around his own children, but he wins custody of them for the whole of each summer, while Teresa gets a job and keeps it together the rest of the year by the skin of her teeth. The result is that the kids grow up with virtually no supervision, especially in the summer, when Bert leaves everything to Beverly, who can’t cope.

This novel reminded me in some ways of Jane Smiley’s Last Hundred Years trilogy, although it spans only about 45 or 50 years. However, it felt that the characters in this novel are much more knowable. I always enjoy Patchett’s writing, and her novels are all different from each other. I enjoyed this one very much.

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